My Shiny Penny this week is not a place or thing, but a philosophy – an attitude of connecting people with what and whom they need, without self-serving motives. As the great Zig Ziglar once said, “You can have everything in life you want, if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.”

One of my favorite things to do is to connect people with whom or what they need. To be good at this, you must obviously have solid a network of people in different fields with whom to connect others. But… that is the easy part.

The greatest mistake I see people make when connecting others is they treat people like they have a dollar sign on their forehead. The first key to truly being a connector is to expect nothing in return. Have you ever thought you were dealing with someone who was connecting you with someone else only to discover they had a WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) attitude? Ugh!

The second key is to follow through. When you tell someone you are going to connect them, be sure you follow through and actually do it. There are times when you may need to qualify a connection and check with the person you will be connecting. However, I have found that to be the exception, not the rule, if the people know you are genuine in your desire to be a connector. As Brian Tracy said, “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

Zig Ziglar was right. Connecting people with someone or something that will help them is like solving a big puzzle for me. It is fun to see how the pieces fall together. A wonderful book that expounds on this philosophy is called The Go Giver by Bob Burg. My friends Wade and Natalie Erickson gave me the book as a Christmas gift a few years ago. I highly recommend it if you are working on understanding the “connector” principle.